Oscar Adams, 72, a Pioneer As Alabama Top Court Justice

By HOLCOMB B. NOBLE

Published: February 18, 1997

Correction Appended

Former Justice Oscar W. Adams Jr. of the Alabama Supreme Court, the first black ever elected to statewide office in Alabama, died on Saturday at the Baptist Medical Center-Montclair in Birmingham, his hometown. He was 72.

The cause was an infection related to cancer, hospital officials said.

Justice Adams was elected to the State Supreme Court in 1982, having been appointed two years earlier by Gov. Fob James to fill a vacancy there. He won re-election twice.

It was the 1982 vote that made him the first black in Alabama's history, even including Reconstruction, to be elected to statewide office.

Former Governor James, asked after Justice Adams died on Saturday why he had decided to appoint a black man to the highest court of a state with a history of often violent racial turmoil, said he had simply been ''looking for a solid jurist, a man of the law and a gentleman with a proven record.''

Justice Adams, the son of a newspaper publisher, was born in Birmingham and received a bachelor's degree from Talladega College in 1944 and his law degree from Howard University in 1947. He became the first black member of the Birmingham Bar Association and founded the city's first black law firm, Adams, Baker & Clemon.

In the years before his appointment by Governor James, he was a leading civil rights lawyer, representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, among others.

By the time he was up for election in 1982, it seemed to many that lingering racism was actually working for him. ''Look Closely'' read the headline of one newspaper advertisement, placed by antagonists, that bore photographs of the three candidates and listings of their qualifications. If the notion was that identifying one of the candidates as black was enough to defeat him, it proved wrong. As one voter later wrote to The Montgomery Advertiser: ''I just saw the ad that said, 'Look Closely.' I did, and I noticed that Oscar Adams had the best credentials.''

Justice Adams remained on the court until his retirement in 1993. Among the decisions he wrote was one in which the majority upheld the death penalty as consistent with the State Constitution.

He is survived by his wife, Anne-Marie Adams; three children from his first marriage, to Willa Intersoll Adams: Gail Harden of East Point, Ga., Oscar W. Adams 3d of Birmingham, and Frank T. Adams of Slidell, La.; two sons of his second wife, Kynath and Kevin Bradford, both of Birmingham; a brother, Dr. Frank E. Adams Sr. of Birmingham, and 10 grandchildren.

Photo: Oscar W. Adams Jr. (Associated Press)

Correction: February 20, 1997, Thursday Because of an editing error, an obituary on Tuesday about Oscar W. Adams Jr., a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, referred incorrectly to Gov. Fob James Jr. Besides having held the post from 1978 to 1982, he was elected in 1994 to a four-year term and remains in office.